BURN THE PIANO

Keyboards have the power to create nearly any mood and send a song traveling through time. Guided by an expert player, the right synth can scream ‘80s new wave, and a properly-tweaked organ can walk the walk of ‘60s pop. It’s this versatility that does it for Steve Bays, the keyboard brains and brawn behind Hot Hot Heat. “It’s like the difference between the Roland Juno 6 keyboard and a piano,” he says. While both are captained by the same black and white interface, “they’re so drastically different that each can take a song in a completely different direction.”